How It Feels to Float

Starred review from April 8, 2019
Set in Wollongong, Australia, Fox’s exquisite debut offers an intimate portrayal of a teenager navigating familial and social complexities while living with an undiagnosed mental illness. Biz, 17, blames herself for her father’s death when she was seven (“I am why he was sad”), and she doesn’t tell anyone that he remains a visible, often comforting presence in her life. Biz has her posse of friends, including her best friend Grace, whom she once kissed, and who supports Biz as she begins to explore her sexual identity. But a drunken beach party incident leads to her dramatic expulsion from the group and catapults her into suicidal depression. Biz drops out of school, begins clinical treatment, and makes unexpected new friends, including Jasper, a teen with challenges of his own. However, her ongoing hallucinations, panic attacks, and disassociations, in which she has no memory of incidents others report, leave her increasingly
perplexed about her experiences, until she reaches a crisis point. Through lyrical first-person narration, Fox empathically conveys the hereditary nature of Biz’s illness, its disorienting manifestations, and the limitations and power of love to heal. Ages 14–up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, InkWell Management.

April 4, 2019
How do you find the will to live when you can’t even feel the ground anymore? Elizabeth Martin Grey—Biz—doesn’t know. All she knows is that she’s got one foot in reality and the other in a place where her dad is still alive to talk to her. When Biz finds herself cast out by her peers, abandoned by her best friend, and no longer welcome at her school, it becomes harder and harder to know what’s real and what isn’t—and to find the will to keep going. This is a perfect, surreal exploration of mental illness and grief. Fox’s writing is poetry, bringing the reader to the brink of Biz’s madness and back again as she finds new ways to make meaning, and new people to make it with. As she searches for answers and connection, Biz’s relationships with her mother, her new friend Jasper, and her elderly friend Sylvia help her to find the ground again. How it Feels to Float is a visceral reading experience that captures the way in which many teens struggle with mental illness. It is a lesson in acceptance and understanding, and readers will be deeply moved.

Bec Kavanagh is a Melbourne-based writer, reviewer and academic